Echo Burning

said. “But that’s how I’d have done it. That’s the trick, Alice. Think like them. Never fails.”
    “Never?”
    He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
    The sleeping crossroads hamlet was dead ahead. The school, the gas station, the diner. Pecos straight on, Old Fort Stockton to the right.
    “Well?” she asked.
    He said nothing.
    “Well?” she asked again.
    He stared through the windshield.
    “Decision?” she said.
    He said nothing. She braked hard and skidded a yard on the soaked road and came to a complete halt right on the melted stop line.
    “Well?”
    Roll the damn dice, Reacher .
    “Make the turn,” he said.

    The driver decided to take a shower first. An excusable delay. He had time. The room was locked. The child was fast asleep. He stripped off his clothes and folded them neatly and placed them on his chair. Stepped into the bathroom. Pulled the shower curtain and set the water running.
    Then he unwrapped a new bar of soap. He liked motel soaps. He liked the crisp paper packets, and the smell when you opened them. It bloomed out at you, clean and strong. He sniffed the shampoo. It was in a tiny plastic bottle. It smelled of strawberries. He read the label. Conditioning Shampoo, it said. He leaned in and placed the soap in the porcelain receptacle and balanced the shampoo on the rim of the tub. Pushed the curtain aside with his forearm and stepped into the torrent.

    The road northeast out of Echo was narrow and winding and clung to a hilly ridge that followed the course of the Coyanosa Draw. Now the big Ford was no longer ideal. It felt oversized and soft and ungainly. The blacktop was running with water flowing right to left across its surface. Heavy rills were pushing mud and grit over it in fan-shaped patterns. Alice was struggling to maintain forty miles an hour. She wasn’t talking.Just hauling the wallowing sedan around an endless series of bends and looking pale under her tan. Like she was cold.
    “You O.K.?” he asked.
    “Are you?” she asked back.
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “You just killed two people. Then saw a third die and a house burn down.”
    He glanced away. Civilians .
    “Water under the bridge,” he said. “No use dwelling on it now.”
    “That’s a hell of an answer.”
    “Why?”
    “Doesn’t stuff like that affect you at all?”
    “I’m sorry I didn’t get to ask them any questions.”
    “Is that all you’re sorry for?”
    He was quiet for a second.
    “Tell me about that house you’re renting,” he said.
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “My guess is it’s a short-term kind of a place, people in and out all the time, not very well maintained. My guess is it was kind of dirty when you moved in.”
    “So?”
    “Am I right?”
    She nodded at the wheel. “I spent the first week cleaning.”
    “Grease on the stove, sticky floors?”
    “Yes.”
    “Bugs in the closets?”
    She nodded again.
    “Roaches in the kitchen?”
    “A colony,” she said. “Big ones.”
    “And you got rid of them?”
    “Of course I did.”
    “How?”
    “Poison.”
    “So tell me how you felt about that.”
    She glanced sideways. “You comparing those people to cockroaches?”
    He shook his head. “Not really. I like cockroaches better. They’re just little packets of DNA scuttling around, doingwhat they have to do. Walker and his buddies didn’t have to do what they did. They had a choice. They could have been upstanding human beings. But they chose not to be. Then they chose to mess with me, which was the final straw, and they got what they got. So I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’m not even going to give it another thought. And if you do, I think you’re wrong.”
    She was quiet for another twisting mile.
    “You’re a hard man, Reacher,” she said.
    He was quiet in turn.
    “I think I’m a realistic man,” he said. “And a decent enough guy, all told.”
    “You may find normal people don’t agree.”
    He nodded.
    “A lot of you don’t,” he said.

    He stood in the warm water long enough to soak all over, and then he started on his hair. He lathered the shampoo into a rich halo and worked on his scalp with his fingertips. Then he rinsed his hands and soaped his face, his neck, behind his ears. He closed his eyes and let the water sluice down over his body. Used more shampoo on his chest where the hair was thick. Attended to his underarms and his back and his legs.
    Then he washed his hands and his forearms very thoroughly and